Welcome to issue three of Onesixty. We’ve been describing Onesixty as a magazine for “text message poetry” but from now on we’re going to change that description to the much less snappy and much more difficult to remember “poems that can be delivered as text messages”.
Why? Because “text message poetry” sounds like a special form of poetry that only applies to text messages, and it particularly suggests a connection with the mythical Text Message Language of abbreviations. Poems that can be delivered as text messages, on the other hand, can be anything the writers are truthful, inventive and careful enough to make them. They just need to be short.
The phrase is also a reminder that this is as much about reading as it is about writing. Getting a poem on a mobile phone can be a strange and powerful way to read poetry: the poems sometimes coincide with the circumstances in which they’re received – a poem about travel arrives while the reader is waiting for a train – and the 'live' nature of getting a text message gives an unexpected, almost supernatural charge to the words.
From February 14th throughout the rest of 2003 centrifugalforces will be running the CityPoems event in Leeds in the north of England. CityPoems will allow readers to receive poems by text message from a network of PoemPoints around the city, with each poem connected to or commenting on the nature of the location in which it is being read. Mobile phones become live books.
As well as poems written by the people of Leeds we’ll be using some of our favourite Onesixty poems as part of CityPoems. Throughout 2003 if a poem is submitted for Onesixty it will also be considered for CityPoems.
To submit a new one for both, please email your poem to , and scroll right to read this issue's latest poems.
SCROLL RIGHT TO READ POEMS
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